lemon cake
I recently got in touch with a friend from a long time ago--really, lifetimes ago, back when I was a young graduate student at Princeton, about to make a series of decisions (to marry young, to have my first child, to move across the country away from my PhD program) that would set me off down a road of motherhood and work that roll up to the fact that I have never, not once in my life, gone on any vacation by myself, let alone leave my family for ten days, as I am about to do when I go to California for a cancer retreat. But I digress, as per usual. The friend wrote me back and said something like I hope when I reach the end of my days I also--hold up, who the hell cares what else he said, the end of my days ? does he think I'm at the end of my days? Because I don't think I'm at the end of my days. Or is this like people yelling support on the sidelines near the end of the marathon: people who cheerfully trill out "you're almost there!"-- a sentiment which